I purchased my wife a HP Pavillion DV6000 notebook this weekend, I think I would have preferred to get the Sony Vaio but that ended up being a bit pricey. After removing all those HP craplets that are littered throughout the system I started to look a little more closely at the the Performance Information, specifically the Windows Experience Index.

I found the Windows Vista blog that helped to explain in more details what these arbitrary numbers would mean in relation to the actual user experiences. My lowest number was in relation to the 'Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero' at 2.2, this seemed kinda low and coupled with the fact that I only have 1 Gb RAM (2 x 512MB sticks ... how frustrating) the overall experience was surprisingly snappy. I am very happy with the Vista feel, I am just loving the eye candy.

I love the concept of Gadgets and am looking forward to creating a good Google Notifier. I am not sure I like any of the Gadgets that represent Gmail so far. I would have thought that most companies would be making Gadgets with a friendly digital signature to give us that warm fuzzy feeling as we install ... but alas the only Gadgets of note were signed by Microsoft.

I became painfully aware of the confirmations required for every single installation\uninstallation that I performed. It got to the point that I was not even reading the messages which surely is the whole point of the added security.

I checked out the file system briefly which now consists of the much more succinct "C:\Users\[YOURID]", I never like the "C:\Documents and Settings\YOURID".

What else ... oh ... with they have given a well deserved face lift to all the games and added a couple of new ones. I absolutely love the addition of the 3D chess game, it allows you chose the type of Board and pieces, but I really wish we could use cooler characters ala Star Wars.

Now I was little disappointed that Zone Alarm has not updated its product to work on Vista. Aside from that I give the first day of Vista two thumbs way up!!!

"We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us." - Francois de La Rochefoucauld